The speaker asks a strange question: where is my absence? Something, or someone, has gone missing, and the speaker is searching for the gap itself. The house is described as "virginal," which suggests it is untouched, clean, and eerily unlived-in, as if no one has really been there. Then comes the most unsettling line: "I could not stay with myself." The speaker seems to have fled from their own company, so the missing person may be the speaker.
The last two lines turn to nature. Cold water goes back to being ice, and wind returns to a rose bed. Each element finds its way home, while the speaker cannot. The mood is quiet, lonely, and slightly eerie. The poem doesn't explain what caused the feeling, which makes it read like a moment of deep disconnection, where the world keeps its settled order and the speaker feels out of place.